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Max is a Shadowblade, a supernatural--and supernaturally competent--warrior bound to protect her witch Giselle. As a Shadowblade, Max doesn't age. She is better, faster, stronger than any ordinary human being. And she hates it. Giselle betrayed her trust to make Max what she is, and though she is magically compelled to protect Giselle and follow orders, Max works against her witch in every way she can. Continue reading Bitter NightReview by SilkDiscuss it in our forums.

So silly question here, more in line with the physics of bendalloy than anything else. I assume bullets are knocked off course whenever they hit the barrier at a non-90 degree angle. This seems to follow standard laws of light refraction, much how a glass lens would work. In that case, shouldn't anyone standing in a bubble, or anyone looking at a bubble outside of one, see a HUGE warp in the image, along with the red-shift/purple-shift?

I don't think that it does warp the light that much, as bystanders do not notice its appearance in the second that it is there for them. I agree that physically, it would make sense to, but it could easily be a secondary power of the bendalloy bubble to shift distortion back to lower levels. Also, if it was as you described, it would be much too easy to circumvent the distortion and shoot out of, as anyone in the exact centre would have an undistorted view/path for the bullet (assuming it is a perfectly smooth sphere). As for blueshift/redshift, would it be cancelled by all of the measurement instruments (eg. eyes) and objects (eg, a torch) being affected as well?

As much as people would like to rationalize, fantasy books are not reality based. I don't really need a plausible explanation because I know any good storyteller will simply pluck one out of the air. If later the author thinks of something better then that will get incorporated. RJ really experimented and progressed different methods of traveling over the course of WoT. He was able to change it by "rediscovering" different methods for moving people around that huge world.

I need to read the stickies more I guess. As much as I've enjoyed Brandon's stories this kind of stuff gets old. If there is a theory or something integral to a story I should not have to research these things. They should appear in the glossary IMO. I was absolutely shocked (and a bit appalled) that TWotK did not have a glossary.

I've noticed this in the past on his Wiki page "An author's ability to solve conflict with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic.". In my mind if you don't bother to clearly explain things in the book then you are not doing a good job of allowing the reader to understand the magic associated with the story.

This lack of centralized information makes me think that someone is planning on writing a companion to the universe type of book. If that's not the case, maybe the world is just growing at a rate that the explanations and glossary for main stream readers have not been written.

So silly question here, more in line with the physics of bendalloy than anything else. I assume bullets are knocked off course whenever they hit the barrier at a non-90 degree angle. This seems to follow standard laws of light refraction, much how a glass lens would work. In that case, shouldn't anyone standing in a bubble, or anyone looking at a bubble outside of one, see a HUGE warp in the image, along with the red-shift/purple-shift?

I've always viewed Pushing/Pulling as having a strong correlation to magnets (thus why they only effect metal). Therefore the bubble could be a "magnetic barrier" that would deflect metal coming at non-90 degree angle. This would be invisible to the eye, and would only effect metal objects that passed through it. With our without the scientific outlook, I do not think that the bubble would ever distort light, since you can only Push or pull against metal object, not light itself.

The only reason I had asked in the first place is because some months ago, I remember a big thread on 17th shard about it... I thought Brandon had made some comment in regards to questions that he was aware that normal physics would cause that type of problem, but wasn't sure how he was going to handle it in universe. I guess I had just falsely assumed that with the bullet deflection, it would have a similar explanation as the redshift/blueshift as discussed before.

The lack of a glossary is due to a glossary getting too huge and unwieldy. In the Internet age a wiki is better for information like that.

I assumed that but wasn't sure of the reason. If the series is going to span at least a decade (which I would assume if there are ten planned books) I would think a glossary would be needed. The only other option is to get up out of bed or grab a smart phone to check something online. Neither option seems very appealing.

The other issue I have with that is there is no "official" wiki. With other books the author has approved the knowledge within the glossary. There were a lot of ways that a glossary can come into play with theories as they are official statements. The only wikis I'm aware of are put up by fans.

I noticed there is someone that has put together a 160+ page report on "Brandonology". This guy should have been a staff member! It looks like he's tried to go through every shred of information he could find. I've saved it but I'll probably end up converting it to place on the kindle to read when I can.

With a series that is going to be ten books, it won't be possible to have a useful glossary. The Wheel of Time glossary has become really huge over the years and is still missing a ton of information. Sites like Encyclopaedia-Wot are more useful even though not official.

17th Shard is the official Brandon Sanderson fansite, so its wiki is as close to official as you will get. Most of what it says is accurate.